Officer buys plane ticket for soldier on her way to funeral

DENVER - His father always taught Henry Jones to take care of people, Jones, a DPD Community Resource officer at DIA took that to heart.

On Friday, he paid for a plane ticket of a perfect stranger Friday, because the Army soldier needed to get to her grandfather’s funeral.

Jones told 9NEWS, another officer called him to help Friday, since Jones often works with members of the military.

Jones said it appeared the soldier bought a ticket from a third party site and it was either invalid or there was a glitch in the system. Bottom line – she had no ticket.

Jones told 9NEWS the airline couldn’t provide free travel to the soldier, so he pulled out his own credit card.

“I made a quick decision pulled out my credit card and charged it right there,” Jones said. “The lady looked at me, the ticket agent, looked at me kind of surprised, she said, ‘are you sure you want to do that? I said, ‘I have no choice, we got to get her to see her grandfather for the funeral.”

Jones said he would do it all over again.

He told the soldier he didn’t want his $556 back. He told her to pay it forward.

“My father used to tell me, ‘Junior you take care of your people, you take care of your troops,’” Jones said. “It’s one of the core values that I learned coming onto the police department, they tell us you take care of our citizens, we take care of our people.”

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Since seeing the story, a few viewers have reached out to reimburse the officer. If you'd like to, send Anastasiya an email.